by Jarrett Hoffman
From Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra comes A New Century, a three-disc, live album that inaugurates the ensemble’s new record label. Each disc matches a newer work with an older one, and in Volume Two, we find another fascinating pairing: one piece written after a trip to Italy, the other born out of a horror story.
by Daniel Hathaway
This weekend, music director Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will precede their Thursday and Saturday performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Cleveland premieres of Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud’s Stromab. The 15-minute work was co-commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra, who will take it to New York’s Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on January 23. Staud was named by Welser-Möst as the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons.
Thanks to the resources of the internet, it’s possible to do a bit of prepping to hear such a new work before taking your seat in Severance Hall — when many patrons will have their first opportunity to read the notes in the program book. Here’s your opportunity to do a little homework before the downbeat.
Staud’s work, which translates as “Downstream,” is based on The Willows, a 1907 horror tale by the British author Algernon Blackwood. [Read more…]